Abstract
BACKGROUND: Learning to recognise the seriously ill patient and developing the ability to manage them is a very important part of the education and training of surgeons. A general surgical senior house officer (SHO) spends 4 months on our surgically-led high dependency unit (HDU), as part of their basic surgical training programme. AIM: To assess a surgical high dependency unit as an educational resource. METHODS: We interrogated our specifically designed database for a 5-year period (April 1997 to March 2002) to look at what a 4-month attachment offered SHOs in respect of: the number of patients treated; their modes of presentation; the specialty; the physiological and operative scores as determined by the POSSUM scoring system; and the interventions that occurred. DISCUSSION: We have demonstrated that a 4-month attachment to a surgical HDU provides a consistent and valuable clinical resource for teaching and learning in surgical education and training.
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